Mailbag: Mailbag: Take that, DOD!

Mailbag: Mailbag: Take that, DOD!

2:40 /
May 21, 2008

This week: how to access CNET TV in Iraq and on iPhone. Could RSS be the answer to everything?

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>> Molly Wood: Hey everyone I am Molly Wood and welcome to the CNET Mailbag, the show where we take your feedback about CNET and even answer the occasional question or two. Let's get started. Our first e-mail comes from Sergeant Steve who writes' " Molly, love the show but I am deployed to Iraq and they, the DOD, are blocking videos on their network, all videos to include those on news sites. I need my CNET TV fixed. Do you know of work around for this problem I have attempted to use proxy servers and masking my IP address but alas, their tech nerds have seen those tricks before. Keep up the amusing shows, helps me keep connected to back home." Okay Sergeant Steve, as much as it sort of terrifies me to help you thwart the department of defense I do have some thoughts because I am all about troop in Iraq. Do they let you have iTunes or other RSS readers? Like could you subscribe to our video feeds via RSS? Then they are not videos on websites, they are just downloads. You should be able to find the shows listed on iTunes so may be try that. And DOD if you are watching I almost never say anything subversive in the buzz report. Okay, last week we talked about how to watch CNET Video on an iPod touch or on iPhone. And Jeff decided that he's not waiting for Justine to get things up and running. So, he sent in his own solution. Turns out may be RSS is the answer here too. Jeff says, "I have an iPhone and I just figured out how to watch CNET TV on it without iTunes. All you need to do is put in the RSS feed for the desired show available at cnettv.com into the address bar and you will be forwarded to reader.mac.com, Apple's RSS reader for the iPhone. If you just click on one of the entries and then on the little QuickTime icon, it will start playing that episode." Okay, here's the thing, I tried that and what I got was basically just this page but no thing to click on and no QuickTime icon. It didn't seem to download. So, May be I am missing something, may be Jeff or someone else can let me know what's going on, because I do really want to get this working. Okay, we are about out of time for today, just one last note on CNET TV. Hi, this is user Mr. LaFrance, "Hi your videos are clichy on the Mozilla Firefox 2 and it's really bad. Thank you, user Mr. LaFrance." Clichy? You mean Cliche? Probably not. Clicky? Not sure. Clichy is a town in France, so may - no. You know what I think I know what you mean user Mr. LaFrance and we're still working on it. Keep the faith. Okay, that's it for this week's edition of the CNET mailbag. Keep your feedback coming. mailbag@cnet.com or send me a postcard, 235 Second Street, San Francisco, California 94105. See you next time.
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